Bill and Wendy's ickcillint adventures

Sunday is usually our day of exploration.  Today, we donned our motorcycle helmets, filled the rucksack with nuts, oranges and water and head out over the causeway to explore a little village called Uppavalladi.   We parked our bike under a palmyrah tree at the entrance to a little graveyard, and for the first and only time, took precautions to secure our motorcycle helmets against theft. After a long walk that meandered through the dusty but lively village, we sat on a grassy knoll over- looking the shallow grey blue lagoon munching out lunch.  We guzzled some water and then lazily stretched out on the grass for a cat nap.  Refreshed, we arose making a loop back into the village. We arrived back at the disheveled grave site to don our helmets and ride back to town. Bill's helmet was gone! Stolen.  Mine still dangled from the string we had used to secure the helmets.  Aw well, in a month, we were leaving the helmet behind anyway.  So, with no ...

The Agony and the Ecstasy is nearly over.   We fly home on December 12 th and flying into the time zone, we arrive home on December 12.   Our adventure into development work in a post conflict period of Sri Lanka has been ecstasies come true.   It has been an adventure.   Whilst Bill and I have travelled sufficiently to foreign lands, we have never lived in a foreign country, never been a visible minority and this move into uniquely unfamiliar territory to us or to anyone we knew was certainly adventure.   The ecstasy contained challenge.   Challenge was unleashed by twisting our tongues around Sinhala and Tamil languages, both completely unintelligible to the other. Challenge was navigating the daunting, jumbled, disordered and colourful marketplaces in order to find the essentials of life: food, matches, clothing, and household items.   Challenging us was adjusting to the pace, timing and lack of urgency in a collective culture and the difficul...